Amazon continues its fall from grace – or at least continues to piss me off. Same thing. A month ago they “lost” my account. After several emails, they said that I was back in business. Trouble was, they didn’t seem to have a record of anything I had ordered since February!. I asked them about this and they said that they would “merge” my accounts and all would be well. Sure enough, the next day I got an email stating that my accounts had been merged.

Lou Rosenfeld interviews Mark Hurst Lou Rosenfield (author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web and general architecture guru) interviews Mark Hurst of Creative Good. They discuss (rather heatedly) the differences and similarities between Information Architecture/Usability Engineering and the Customer Experience. It’s a bit long, but mostly worth the effort.

Now that I’ve met you, would object to never seeing each other again, says the Aimee Mann song which is reported to have inspired Magnolia. P.T. Anderson’s latest, and best film. Three hours long, this thing seemed to have a pretty polarizing effect on folks. “Loved It!” or “Too long and stupid.” or “What’s with the frogs?” Put me in the first group. You should see it. Really. I hadn’t even heard of Aimee Mann before seeing the film, but I’ve been listening to her songs non-stop since.

AskTog: Denial in Web Design: Elephants in the Living Room If your development efforts are failing, it’s likely to be the fault of one of these group: Engineers, Security, Lawyers and Graphic Designers. Couldn’t be the engineers, could it?

Nurse Betty Cool, Neil LaBute has another film on the way. I’m sure I’ll feel just as badly about laughing as I did during In the Company of Men.

Summoner Geeks T.M. brought this film to my attention. If you’ve ever been anywhere near folks who played Dungeons and Dragons, this will crack you up. “Roll the dice and see if I’m getting drunk.”

TheStandard.com: Searching for Revenue Yahoo and other “portal” sites are beginning to charge companies to be listed (within a reasonable amount of time, anyway). This is an important shift away from the get-lots-of-traffic-sell-ads model which can’t really work long term.

A Message to Web Designers: If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It “In the end…users want a site that is designed to help them find what they want, not what the marketing department wants to promote.”

One-to-(N)one?: The internet’s once-rosy promise of truly personalized marketing seems to be wilting. More on the as-yet-unrealized dream of personalization.

Internet Companies Learn How to Personalize Service A bit more optimistic, this article from the NY Times says: “That said, the industry is gradually catching up to the hype surrounding personalization, as a growing number of companies have installed tools enabling them to present customized Web pages—if not to a single individual, then at least to groups that have been identified as having a similar profile. This trend is going to raise the ante for companies doing business online, both in terms of investors' and customers' expectations.

Lighthouse – Personalisation Another buzzword begins to bite the dust. At least as far as its hype is concerned, personalization is beginning to tank, both with industry analysts as well as with those companies trying to implement it. Amazon has always been pretty good at it, and even then: “Personalisation technology understands consumers poorly. Amazon.com, the poster child of personalisation, will start recommending needlepoint books to you as soon as you order that ideal gift for your great aunt.

I want one of these! For my daughter, of course.